Penelope's Lament
by Iris Aquarius
Summary: A first person narrative about Penelope's, wife of Odysseus, worries about where her husband is and why he hasn't returned to Ithaca. Takes place after the Trojan War but before he arrives home.


Odysseus,

Why do you tarry away from your home shore of Ithaca so long? The Trojan War has been fought and won. Soldiers and husbands have all come home as conquering heroes or newly made widows are weeping at the heralds that arrive.

I have neither. Word has come that you have survived the war. Not just that, you are acclaimed a hero amongst heroes. Wise, cunning Odysseus who helped beat down Illium's walls with his clever ploys. So, I have no husband, and no reason for him to be gone so long.

You were once so eager to avoid leaving your land and your family. You played at being crazed. Preferred to be ridiculed and overlooked by your peers than fight in this war that had nothing to do with you. We live in a time that holds fame and reputation in the highest esteem. Even higher than youth and beauty which are worshipped by our generation. You would go against that mind set and be forgotten by future generations just to spend those years with me. I will always remember the sight of you raving to the sky and sowing salt into our fertile field. Do you remember what you said to me that morning when sails of war were seen on our horizon?

I do.

I can still feel the heat of your breath on my neck and how the coarse hair of your beard scratched my shoulder as you stood behind me, holding me in your arms.

"Don't believe a thing I say to these men, my love. Play your part and remember I am mad. The grace of Athena's gift and attention was too much for my feeble mind and broke it. You can do this. You're smarter than they are, and prettier. How blessed am I to have a queen like you?" You whispered in my ear, sending chills down my spine.

You always praised my mind but I feel I was never really as cunning as you thought. For I had asked you why you didn't want to go fight this war. I had visions of glory, heroics and songs in my head. I'd never ask a question like that now. I know better now.

"Why would I want blood, sweat and constant hardship when I can stay here with you? If it was just my land I was leaving, I would go. My father is to old for this war and would care for the land like he has all of his life. The land will continue with my care or not. To leave you, though? And my tiny son? I want nothing more than to teach my son how to walk, to handle a plow or a spear, to climb a tree, and run our household. All I want is to feel you leaning back into me, warm and soft. I want to kiss you softly and feel your kiss back. I want to sleep beside you in this bed I made and spend entire days worshiping you and thanking Aphrodite for her favor. I don't want to lead simple Ithacan men to their deaths. I don't want to take the lives of youths fighting for their city and their families. I want you instead."

I was young then. Desirable in my own way. Do you count the years that have gone by and fear the repercussions of mortality. It has been twenty years since they stole my child out of my arms and laid him before your raving plow. I saw then the strength that you have inside of you. The one those men wanted for their war. With reflexes born of a natural warrior you shed the disguise of madness and fought the oxen out of it's time worn furrow to save our son. When you had stopped the plow you looked straight into my eyes with such sadness in their depths. I didn't know how much I loved you until I realized I was going to lose you.

Would you still do all that you could to stay at my side two decades later. I fear it is not so. I fear that it is not a wrecked ship or storm that is keeping you from my side, but knowledge that I am not the girl you left behind. These long years having taken their vengeance on me and I have aged.

You taught me what it feels like to be beautiful. I was raised with the knowledge that my cousin had all the beauty of a swam and the elegance of the divine. The combination created a child so beautiful to look at her was to want her. Helen.

I have wanted to blame her for all my struggles in life time over time. You taught me to look beyond the apparent reasons for things, though. So I know my lovely cousin is blameless. It's just hard when the green-eyed goddess of jealousy follows in her wake pricking every woman and man who sets eyes on her. Woman want to be her. Men want to have her.

In reality, Helen is the reason that I was married to you. I have had many blessing to go with the sorrows of my life, but I know you were the biggest blessing of them all. Favored by Gods, Goddesses, men and women alike. I know you came to Sparta to court my beautiful cousin. You and all the eligible men in Hellas. I was there to help Helen and maybe, if I was lucky, I'd manage to wed one of Helen's castoffs. One of the many men who were not good enough for her. Oh, how I burned with hatred in those days. I was so young and wanted all sorts of things that I now know just cause strife and unhappiness. All I have to do is look at Helen now. Her golden, round beauty diminishing with age and the reputation she carries with her like a heavy cloak weighing her down. All of the gifts of her youth are leaving her. What will she have when they are all gone? A song? A story? Is that worth it?

When this war, waged in Helen's name, took you away from me. All my old animosity welled up inside of me, bitter and blind. It took years for me to reason that the war was fought was not because of one woman, no matter how beautiful she is. Everything boils down to economy and trade and the monopoly Troy had to the wealthy East. Only singers and adolescents believe that wars can be fought over beauty. Poor Helen. She takes the blame for a war waged by coin counting men.

But I wasn't always as wise as I am now. Though, I might have thought I was. When you went to my uncle and told him that you had a way that would stop (or at least postpone) the seemingly inevitable bloodshed that would arise from Helen's choice; for all the young men were too hot blooded and infatuated to be denied calmly. He was clearly suspicious of what you wanted in return. So, when you asked for my hand in marriage as the only price, he agreed instantly. I did too. I had heard much about you, Odysseus. Even when you were young, you were famed for being Athena's favorite and older men than you asked your advice.

For the first time, Helen envied me. What power I held in the days leading up to our wedding. It was a childish feminine power wielded with secret smiles and knowing looks. Helen burned for love in those days and wanted nothing more than to have a husband wed and bedded. Her beauty and fame became a curse because to announce a bridegroom was his death warrant. Jealous suitors would have him lying in his own blood within moments.

Helen has wanted you since the moment you asked for my hand in marriage. You became the only man who had set eyes on her and then wanted another woman more. Your disinterest fueled her fires more than any solicitous lover could have. I couldn't have been happier. I didn't realize until after that it was such a shallow, cold happiness.

The happiness that you showed me in later years outshined it like the sun outshines the pale prick of a single star in a night sky. You showed me that outside of Helen's overwhelming shadow, I was beautiful in my own right. That even if I didn't have her clouds of golden curls or curves that made men itch with silent desire, I had my own beauty. When you ran your hands through my long dark hair with such gentle fingers, I felt beautiful. When your calloused finger lightly brushed my lips and you looked at me with those dark gentle eyes, I felt gorgeous. When your hands traced the contours of my bones and skin and body and whispered in my ear, I felt desirable.

Maybe it's been to long since I saw that smoldering look in your eyes, but I know I am not the girl you left. No longer do I have the soft curves and lushness of youth that make any lass beautiful. Instead, my skin stretches taunt over lean muscles and a strong bone structure. My suitors that crowd your hall say I have elegance. I feel like a skeleton. My hair that you would twine your fingers in and say you wish to get so caught you'd never be able to get them out again has lost any hint of curl or wave it might have had. I have a maid who tells me that she loves how straight it is, calling it a sheet of midnight rain, but she is a kind soul and I know about the silver strands that mar it and betray me.

Whenever I see that your ship is not in the harbor, I look at these faults and know deep in my heart that you are twining your hard, warriors hands that can be so gentle through another woman's dark hair and making her feel as beautiful as you once made me feel.

It's been ten years since the end of the war that lasted just as long. No storm can keep you away this long.

You used to tell me that you didn't love me just for my beauty. You used to love to play mind games and puzzles with me. Your eyes used to shine with such pride and happiness when I'd unravel a particularly hard one, then they'd darken with heat and you would carry me to the bed that lies empty now and tell me how much you loved my mind.

Do you remember that? Do you remember how you'd call me your equal in all things?

I haven't lost that part of myself. Indeed, I feel it has increased over these years. I occupy myself with the kind of riddles that you once murmured to me while kissing the tips of my fingers. I must confess, it's much easier to answer them now than with the distraction of your lips. Though I have other distractions now, and none so pleasant as you.

When I was girl, I learned that love had nothing to do with marriage. I was to be sold off to the highest bidder for the land, dowry and connections my father would provide. I wasn't to be prized as anything more than a provider of heirs.

You dashed my beliefs with a smile. You showed me what love can do for a marriage. How we could work together to make Ithaca flourish and make our people happy. Those first days of our marriage will always be ingrained in my mind. The tentative days of exploration and discovery as two strangers fell in love. You showed me that I was to be proud of my beauty, my caring nature, my sensible and dutiful manner, and most of all my mind.

Though, maybe now after those years of cunning battle strategies and intrigue, you have lost your love of the cunning. Maybe a simple, simpering beauty is all you want, maybe she can ease your battle weary mind where my riddles and games would exhaust you more. Is that why you avoid the home you love? The wife and child you left?

For neigh on ten years I have kept that hoard of suitors at bay. I have used every ounce of trickery and manipulation to keep them out of your bed and Ithaca politics. It's been hard, Odysseus. You may have fought a way at Troy but I have been fighting one here. Maybe it's relatively bloodless but the toll it takes on my is real enough. It is a woman battle instead of a man, and I have been fighting for ten years. Didn't you feel the pain and weariness after ten years at Troy? Didn't you want to do anything to finally end it? I feel these things.

I will stay strong though.

For you. For our son. For Ithaca. None of these men can be the king you were. If they were to marry me, they would rule Ithaca. I am once more measured by the dowry I possess more than who I am as a person. None of the men care about _me. _I have seen them spoil our home and our larder. They would pilfer this land and give nothing back. Not like you. They'd never feel such fierce pain in sowing salt in a single field. Oh, how you struggled with that and no matter how clever you are, my dear husband, I think the reason the plan failed was the pain in your eyes as you looked into the future and saw the field forever barren.

I still go out to that field. Nearly every morning, as a silent ritual to remind me what you were willing to sacrifice to stay here. I need to. It lies as a constant reminder that you were willing to destroy part of Ithaca's future to save our own. I am a woman. It is born in me to love the land and my family more than myself. I can sacrifice us to protect the land. How long can I do it though? The myths have ever called the land we walk upon a woman, a mother. I know why. I have been just as barren as that field for all these years. I think of the children we dreamed of; the hoard of children we would raise. We once talked of what we would name them. Do the names of our unborn children run through your head wherever you are? Do you mourn them as I do? Or is that a woman's pain?

If you had come home after the war, ten years ago, I might still have been able to give you some of those children.

Now I can't.

Odysseus, it had been so long since I have seen your face. Do I even remember what you look like? My heart aches with the answer. I try to grasp memories of your dark brown eyes that expressed every feeling inside of you. I draw those heavy brows and strong jaw in my mind's eyes but does my memory betray me? I don't know if I can remember the exact shade of brown your skin would turn under the summer sun. Am I fabricating how achingly soft those worn hands felt on my smooth skin? Twenty years is a long time and memories are not tangible things. I cannot hold onto it like I can the clothes you left behind. I try to hold them tight but like smoke or wishes they allude my tight hold and are leaving me.

Come home! Give me new memories to drown out the ones of these lonely years. Please.

You missed seeing our son take his first steps.

He learned to plow from a man you don't know.

He discovered how to hunt following the men who would usurp your throne.

He never climbed a tree.

And I, a woman who shouldn't know such things, taught him how to run this household.

I ache to be held my you again and to feel that warmth of another body in my bed. It has been empty for too long. I love you, Odysseus. You showed me what love was. You showed me that I was not just a dim shadow of my bright cousin. I shone in my own merit. Did I shine enough?

I thought I left that green eyed Goddess in my past when I became your wife. Instead she has become a constant companion of mine, pointing out every grey strand of hair and telling me about the beautiful woman who could make you forget about me.


End file.
